Privacy Policy - FlashBooks | Book Summaries for busy people. -

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data is collected when you use the FlashBooks mobile application (the “App”), getflashnotes.com or getflashbooks.com (the “Website”) and the services provided through them (together with the App and Website, the “Service”), and how such personal data will be used.

BY USING THE SERVICE, YOU PROMISE US THAT (I) YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTAND AND AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY, AND (II) YOU ARE OVER 16 YEARS OF AGE (OR HAVE HAD YOUR PARENT OR GUARDIAN READ AND AGREE TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY FOR YOU). If you do not agree, or are unable to make this promise, you must not use the Service. In such case, you must (a) delete your account using the functionality found in “Settings” in the App or the Website, or contact us and request deletion of your data; (b) cancel any subscriptions depending on how you subscribed (using the functionality provided by Apple or Google if you subscribed via an app store; or the functionality of our Website if you purchased a subscription via the Website); and (c) delete the App from your device(s).

“GDPR” means the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

“EEA” includes all current member states of the European Union and the European Economic Area. For the purpose of this policy, EEA shall include the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“Process”, in respect of personal data, includes to collect, store, and disclose to others.

1. CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT

We collect data you give us voluntarily (for example, when you enter your reading preferences, name, and email). We also may receive data about you from third parties (for example, when you sign in via Google). We also collect data automatically (for example, your IP address) and use third-party service providers for such collection.

2. WHY WE PROCESS YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We process your personal data:

To provide our Service This includes enabling you to use the Service in a seamless manner and preventing or addressing Service errors or technical issues.
To customize your experience We process your personal data to make offers and/or tailor your user experience.
To manage your account and provide customer support services We process your personal data to respond to your requests for technical support, service information or to any other communication you initiate. This includes accessing your account to address technical support requests. For this purpose, we may send you, for example, notifications or emails about the performance of our Service, security, payment transactions, notices regarding our Terms of Service or this Privacy Policy.
To communicate with you regarding your use of our Service. We communicate with you, for example, by push notifications or by emails. These may include reminders and motivational messages encouraging you to continue reading, or other information about the Service. As a result, you may, for example, receive a push notification every day at a particular time reminding you to read. To opt-out of receiving push notifications, you need to change the settings on your device. To opt-out of receiving emails, you should click the unsubscribe link in the footer of our email.
To research and analyze your use of the Service. This helps us to better understand our business, analyze our operations, maintain, improve, innovate, plan, design, and develop the Service and our new products. We also use such data for statistical analysis purposes, to test and improve our offers.
To send you marketing communications We process your personal data for our marketing campaigns. We may add your email address to our marketing list. As a result, you will receive information about our products, such as for example, special offers. If you do not want to receive marketing emails from us, you can unsubscribe by following the instructions in the footer of the marketing emails.
We may also show you advertisements in our App or Website, and send you push notifications for marketing purposes. To opt out of receiving push notifications, you need to change the settings on your device.
To personalize our adsWe and our partners, including Facebook and Google, use your personal data to tailor ads and possibly even show them to you at the relevant time. For example, if you have installed our App, you might see ads of our products, for example, in your Facebook feed.
How to opt out or influence personalized advertising
iOS: On your iPhone or iPad, go to “Settings,” then “Privacy” and tap “Advertising” to select “Limit Ad Track”. In addition, you can reset your advertising identifier (this also may help you to see less of personalized ads) in the same section.
Android: To opt-out of ads on an Android device, simply open the Google Settings app on your mobile phone, tap “Ads” and enable “Opt out of interest-based ads”. In addition, you can reset your advertising identifier in the same section.
macOS: On your MacBook, you can disable personalized ads: go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy, select Apple Advertising, and deselect Personalized Ads.
Windows: On your laptop running Windows 10, you shall select Start > Settings > Privacy and then turn off the setting for Let apps use advertising ID to make ads more interesting to you based on your app activity. If you have another Windows version, please follow the steps here.
To learn even more about how to affect advertising choices on various devices, please look at the information available here.
In addition, you may get useful information and opt out of some interest-based advertising, by visiting the following links:
- Network Advertising Initiative – http://optout.networkadvertising.org/
- Digital Advertising Alliance – http://optout.aboutads.info/
- Digital Advertising Alliance (Canada) – http://youradchoices.ca/choices
- Digital Advertising Alliance (EU) – http://www.youronlinechoices.com/
- DAA AppChoices page – http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices
Browsers:It is also may be possible to stop your browser from accepting cookies altogether by changing your browser’s cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the “options” or “preferences” menu of your browser. The following links may be helpful, or you can use the “Help” option in your browser.
• Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
• Cookie settings in Firefox
• Cookie settings in Chrome
• Cookie settings in Safari web and iOS
Google allows its users to opt out of Google’s personalized ads and to prevent their data from being used by Google Analytics.
To process your payments We provide paid products and/or services within the Service. For this purpose, we use third-party services for payment processing (for example, payment processors ). As a result of this processing, you will be able to make a payment for a subscription and we will be notified that the payment has been made.
We will not store or collect your payment card details ourselves. This information will be provided directly to our third-party payment processors. We use Stripe and PayPal to process payments on the Website.
To enforce our Terms of Service and to prevent and combat fraud We use personal data to enforce our agreements and contractual commitments, to detect, prevent, and combat fraud. As a result of such processing, we may share your information with others, including law enforcement agencies (in particular, if a dispute arises in connection with our Terms of Service).
To comply with legal obligations We may process, use, or share your data when the law requires it, in particular, if a law enforcement agency requests your data by available legal means.

3. LEGAL BASIS FOR THE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA

(APPLICABLE TO EEA-BASED USERS ONLY)

In this section, we are letting you know what legal basis we use for each particular purpose of processing. For more information on a particular purpose, please refer to Section 2. This section applies only to EEA-based users.
We process your personal data under the following legal bases:

3.1 your consent;
Under this legal basis, we will send you marketing emails. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the footer of our marketing emails.
3.2 to perform our contract with you; Under this legal basis we:
- Provide our Service
- Customize your experience
- Manage your account and provide you with customer support
- Communicate with you regarding your use of our Service
- Process your payments
For our legitimate interests or for the legitimate interests of others, unless those interests are overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms that require protection of personal data; We rely on legitimate interests:
- To communicate with you regarding your use of our Service – which includes sending you push notifications or email.
- To research and analyze your use of the Service – to improve our Service.
- To send you marketing communications – to promote our Service.
- To personalize our ads – to promote our Service in a reasonably targeted way.
- To enforce our Terms of Service and to prevent and combat fraud – to enforce our legal rights, prevent and address fraud, prevent unauthorized use of the Service, and address non-compliance with our Terms of service.
- To comply with legal obligations.

4. WITH WHOM WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We share information with third parties that help us operate, provide, improve, integrate, customize, support, and market our Service. We may share some sets of personal data, in particular, for purposes indicated in Section 2 of this Privacy Policy. The types of third parties we share information with include, in particular:

Service providers
- We share personal data with third parties that we hire to provide services or perform business functions on our behalf, based on our instructions. We share your personal information with the following types of service providers:
  - cloud storage providers (Google, Amazon AWS)
  - data analytics providers (Facebook, Google, Appsflyer, Firebase, Amplitude)
  - measurement partners
  - marketing partners (social media platforms, marketing services)
  - payment processors (Stripe, PayPal)
  - communication services providers
Law enforcement agencies and other public authorities
- We may use and disclose personal data to enforce our Terms of Service, to protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you or others, and to respond to requests from courts, law enforcement agencies, regulatory agencies, and other public and government authorities, or in other cases provided for by law.
Third parties as part of a merger or acquisition
- As we develop our business, we may buy or sell assets or business offerings. Customers’ information is generally one of the transferred business assets in these types of transactions. We may also share such information with any affiliated entity and may transfer such information in the course of a corporate transaction, such as the sale of our business, a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.
For improving our service and serving ads, we use third party solutions.
- As a result, we may process data using solutions developed by Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Appsflyer, Amplitude, Firebase, Apple, BigQuery. Some of the data is stored and processed on servers of such third parties.

5. HOW YOU CAN EXERCISE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS

To be in control of your personal data, you have the following rights:

Accessing / reviewing / updating / correcting your personal data. You may request a copy of your personal data and request us to update/correct your personal data collected during your use of the Service at support@getflashnotes.com.
Deleting your personal data. You can request erasure of your personal data by sending us an email at support@getflashnotes.com.
When you request deletion of your personal data, we will use reasonable efforts to honor your request. In some cases we may be legally required to keep some of the data for a certain time; in such event, we will fulfill your request after we have complied with our obligations.
Objecting to or restricting the use of your personal data. You can ask us to stop using all or some of your personal data or limit our use thereof by sending a request at support@getflashnotes.com.

6. AGE LIMITATION

We do not knowingly process personal data from persons under 16 years of age. If you learn that anyone younger than 16 has provided us with personal data, please contact us at support@getflashnotes.com.

7. INTERNATIONAL DATA TRANSFERS

We do business internationally. We may transfer personal data to countries other than the country in which the data was originally collected in order to provide the Service set forth in the Terms of Service and for purposes indicated in this Privacy Policy. If these countries do not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information, we deploy special safeguards.
In particular, if we transfer personal data originating from the EEA to countries with not adequate level of data protection, we use one of the following legal bases: (i) Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission (details available here), or (ii) the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework (details available here), or (iii) the European Commission adequacy decisions about certain countries (details available here).

8. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. By continuing to access or use the Service after those changes become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Policy.

9. CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

California’s Shine the Light law gives California residents the right to ask companies once a year what personal information they share with third parties for those third parties’ direct marketing purposes. Learn more about what is considered to be personal information under the statute. To obtain this information from us, please send an email message to support@getflashnotes.com which includes “Request for California Shine the Light Privacy Information” on the subject line and your state of residence and email address in the body of your message. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the “Shine the Light” requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response. Please be aware that not all information sharing is covered by the “Shine the Light” requirements and only information on covered sharing will be included in our response.

10. DATA RETENTION

We will store your personal data for as long as it is reasonably necessary for achieving the purposes set forth in this Privacy Policy (including providing the Service to you), which includes (but is not limited to) the period during which you have an account with the Service. We will also retain and use your personal data as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

11. HOW “DO NOT TRACK” REQUESTS ARE HANDLED

Except as otherwise stipulated in this Privacy Policy, this App does not support “Do Not Track” requests. To determine whether any of the third-party services it uses honor the “Do Not Track” requests, please read their privacy policies.

12. PERSONAL DATA CONTROLLER

FlashBooks, LLC, a company registered in the United States of America will be the controller of your personal data.

13. CONTACT US

You may contact us at any time for details regarding this Privacy Policy. For any questions concerning your account or your personal data please contact us at support@getflashnotes.com.

Last updated May 2022